As he spoke, the room stopped moving and the door opened on a dimly lit corridor. Lok-i-xan’s face changed in a moment. It lost all animation, leaving only a mask that spoke of weary self-control. It was an expression that Abasio recognized from his own mirror, years ago, and he barely stopped himself from patting the leader of Clan Do-Lok on the shoulder as he left his seat to lead them down the hallway. He thought that at some time, it might be appropriate to pat Lok-i-xan, but Abasio did not feel he had that right as yet. He wondered if he ever would.
There were doors, branching corridors, and alcoves along the way. In one of the alcoves a small group of elderly Tingawan men and women had gathered to await them.
Xulai, alert to feelings around her, felt the tension, the sadness.
Precious Wind put her hand on Xulai’s shoulder, squeezing it slightly. “It’s all right. You remember what we told you?”
“The tablet with my mother’s name.”
Precious Wind hugged her and stood silent. The door was opened from within. They entered the shrine.
Abasio had seen shrines before. Artemisia had shrines. In the city where he had lived during his youth every gang had had a shrine. Since Ollie was taken from him and from the world, he had worn the library helmet to visit shrines of the world through many ages of the world. There were shrines of one kind or another in virtually every city or town he had visited on his travels. None were like this.
Light came into the cavern here and there, glowing softly from behind a stalactite or through a tissue-thin curtain of mineral that had obviously flowed into place, molecule by molecule, over centuries of time. This was natural light, reflected downward, possibly angled and directed by mirrors so that it fell precisely upon this place and that place, giving just enough illumination to see the corridors extending into the black distance, each corridor barely lit by tiny stone lanterns that sat atop small stone tablets—thousands of tablets, thousands of lanterns, some dark, most offering a single, tiny glow. They were ranged in rows along the walls, on shelves, around pillars. Behind them the walls shone wetly. The thin slick of moisture that covered them glowed softly; the filmy pools that gathered on horizontal surfaces gleamed.
Abasio thought that if he half shut his eyes he could believe he stood on a mountaintop at night surrounded by a heaven full of stars. Xulai, next to him, sighed. He looked down into her troubled eyes.
“Where?” she whispered.
He took her hand, kissed the palm. “Xu-i-lok knows. Just ask her.”
She breathed deeply. Of course. Xu-i-lok would know. “Mother,” she whispered to herself. “I have brought you home. Tell me where to go.”
It was the tiniest of tugging—the tug a spider’s web might have made—but she felt it. To the right. Past a line of tablets, another, to a group tiered against a wall. To the second tier, back, no, farther back. Many of these were unlighted. Many of these were the tablets of the living. Back. A little farther right . . . And there it was: engraved with the characters that were her mother’s name, furnished with the tiny stone lantern, three legged, three open sides, an ornately carved top in the form of . . . of her fisher . . . and other creatures including a hawk, a chipmunk. Xulai breathed a sob in, out, as she laid her hands upon the stone. The room had been quiet, broken only by the scuff of slippered feet, the brush of fabric, but now it was utterly silent. Within the stone lantern a firefly glow began, like a bit of luminescence on the sea, like the vagrant reflection of a star in a pool, pallid, softly silver, becoming green, then bluer, brighter, a little larger. Xulai held her breath. Suddenly it was a white-hot flash that lit the entire cavern before fading to become softly yellow, a candle light only, fading until it glowed steadily among the thousands of Clan Do-Lok.
“The flash . . . ,” Abasio murmured.
“We believe,” whispered Precious Wind, tears running down her cheeks, “that when that happens, it means the knowledge gained by the returning soul has been shared. This shrine is not for thousands of individuals. What is here is not many little flames. What is here is one clan, one flame, the knowledge and history of one people. And those like Lok-i-xan can consult it, can benefit from it. He talks with her now.”
And indeed, he was beside the tablet, his hands upon it, murmuring. Abasio thought he was saying good-bye, but the words he heard were not the Tingawan words for farewell. Seeing the confusion in his face, Precious Wind wiped her eyes and said, “He’s not saying good-bye. He’s welcoming her home. And now I can mourn her!”
He noticed that she had found a place to burn a lock of her hair. The ashes marked her forehead. As Precious Wind moved away, Xulai came to sit beside him, tears in her eyes as well. “I’m glad she’s home. It’s just . . .”
“What, love?”
“My fisher is gone. He hasn’t been with me since we came.”
“Ah,” he said after a moment, understanding. “It was part of her.”
“Yes,” she agreed, half smiling through the tears. “I hoped he was part of me, but I guess he was part of her. I wish I knew how she did it, how she created it and left it for me. The fisher shape was carved on the top
